The store receipt with its combination of text, numbers, graphics, and color in one discrete rectangle is an abstraction of the self (I buy this, therefore I'm that), residue from a capitalist transaction (the fecal remains of an alienated exchange), and a typology (infinite graphic variations are produced within the category of "receipt"). So making art out of quantities of them makes sense because it's a form of self-portraiture, capitalist critique (if done in certain ways), and conceptual art in the mode of the Bechers and their legion of adherents.

The problem with making a tent out of receipts is that it's too literal. Tents shelter humans from life-threatening climes. A tent made out of receipts won't do that, so therefore it is a metaphorical object. Metaphorical of what? "Receipts as proof that we exist"? (seth's idea) Placing them in the arrangement of a tent does not enhance that perspective. How about the self insulated from the vagaries of capitalism through a veneer of documents produced by that same threatening force? That's a real stretch.

People like the tent because it is "Cool Shit Art" in the grand (and ultimately empty) tradition of Tim Hawkinson. Cool Shit Art works like this: 1) take a cool object (a tent is cool. it looks cool, it's simple, it does cool things, it can be packed real small) 2) take another cool but unrelated object (a bunch of receipts for example. wow - look at all those receipts! I've usually seen one or two receipts at a time but hundreds? Collected over eight years? That's cool.) 3) combine them in a technically challenging way (stitching together all those receipts must have taken a long time! What patience! And it's so fragile. It's fragility increases it's vulnerability which increases its value (valued at $10,000 by the way)). The two cool but unrelated categories will rub up against each other in an unexpected juxtaposition that will serve to make the object twice as cool. But twice as dumb. Twice as dumb because Cool Shit Art is only about the initial impact that can be leveraged off of source materials that otherwise could have a lot of charge. Yes, receipts are powerful symbols but Cool Shit Art does not examine why they are powerful, they just go on the assumption that they are powerful. This is not introspective, critical examination of the world. Instead it's pointing at an object, winking at one's compatriate, and moving on.